Wrap Around Heat Pipe | How does a Wrap Around Heat Pipe work?

A heat pipe is a thermal transfer device. It’s basically a sealed tube filled with refrigerant. It typically spans the supply air and exhaust air sides of a system. Energy is transferred – with no moving parts – from one air stream to the other (as long as there is a temperature difference). Refrigerant is evaporated on the hot side and moves to the other end of the pipe because of vapor pressure. On the cold side refrigerant condenses and then flows back. It’s really that simple.

The wrap around heat pipe is a heat pipe wrapped around a cooling coil. It consists of two sections, the precool (evaporator) section placed before the cooling coil and the reheat (condenser section) placed after the reheat coil.

The precool section is located in the incoming air stream before the cooling coil. When warm air passes over the first section, the liquid refrigerant vaporizes, moving heat to the reheat section ( downstream from the cooling coil). Since heat has been removed from the air before the cooling coil, air passing through the cooling coil drops to a lower temperature, resulting in more condensate removal. The over cooled air is then reheated to a comfortable temperature and a lower relative humidity by the reheat section, using the same heat originally absorbed by the first section.

The process takes place with no energy use due to the passive nature of the heat pipe. The result is an air conditioning system with the ability to remove 50 to 100% more moisture.